Retromedia-in-practice: A practice theory approach for rethinking old and new media technologies

Abstract

The article aims at investigating the persistence and comeback of old media technologies (phenomena we define, in short, ‘retromedia’) by developing a distinctive theoretical approach named retromedia-in-practice and based on practice theory. Far from being abandoned and forgotten, many old media devices and artefacts (such as vinyl records, cassette tapes, analogue photographic cameras, early videogames and brick mobile phones, to mention just a few notable examples) are nowadays readopted by young generations and niche media subcultures. However, most of the existing literature focusing on these cases has limits and shortfalls, resulting in a partial and misleading understanding of these phenomena: scholars and theorists often put at the centre the cultural fascination for vintage objects and the nostalgia effect; other studies rely on a taken-for-granted distinction between old and new media; the relational and processual nature of media change is rarely addressed; and in general, research lacks a framework capable of adequately integrating symbolic processes with material and technological features. In order to cope with these shortfalls, the article adopts the approach of practice theory, which enables to focus not on the media themselves, but on the practices associated with them. After presenting the distinctive framework of analysis, we exemplify our approach by analysing three different cases coming from music (vinyl records), photography (Polaroid-like instant photography) and videogaming (the ‘consolization’ of old arcade games). These case studies rely on original empirical data coming from authors’ qualitative research. The article concludes by arguing that a shift from considering retromedia as objects or discourses to retromedia-in-practice allows to both address the processual nature of retromedia and propose an interpretation that keeps together media materiality, their meanings and also the embodied activities and behaviours that are attached to them.

Rethinking the distinctions between old and new media: Introduction

“…Magaudda and Minniti’s (2019) essay in this special issue shows how a biography of practice approach can serve to reimagine some of media studies’ timeworn distinctions between ‘new’ and ‘old’ as well as between ‘digital’ and ‘analogue’. By broaching ‘retromedia’ (media like vinyl records and polaroid cameras that are popularly considered ‘old’) as practice, they are able to slip out of conventional chronological frames of reference that essentialize these media as old.…”

Liminoid media: On the enduring significance of USB portable flash drives

“…While they may have been temporarily forgotten or ignored, liminoid media remain active in the present and are constitutive of what Mark Deuze (2012) calls ‘media life’ in that they make valuable contributions to ‘the ways in which we experience, make sense of and act upon the world’ (p. 5). Liminoid media, then, is a concept that explicitly focuses renewed attention on established technologies, seeking to understand their materiality ‘and also the embodied activities and behaviours that are attached to them’ (Magaudda and Minniti, 2019: 679), and how the ‘meanings, powers, and characteristics’ (Pingree and Gitelman, 2003: xii) that are associated with them are open to continue renegotiation. In this way, we concur with Manuel Menke and Christian Schwarzenegger (2019: 659) that ‘it is specifically the idea of constant renegotiation that holds potential for inquiries into [liminoid media and] media change’.…”

Technology rewind: The emergence of the analog entrepreneurial ecosystem

“…the uncertainty and anticipation of how a picture taken using film will turn out) and, paradoxically, greater reliability (e.g. analog products are often perceived as having fewer and more simplistic internal components and, thus, as being more durable and less likely to malfunction) (Burkeman, 2017; Magaudda and Minniti, 2019; Sax, 2016). Unpredictability means that analog products can create unique and unexpected outcomes.…”